“Anyway, I’m doing pretty well for myself right now. As for that spiritual flower you mentioned…”
Hua Jian scratched her head, recalling what the Lingcaifeng Master had told her before heading off to hunt down the Dragon Venerable.
Coming over in a few days to properly teach her how to fight with plants? Doesn’t that mean the Lingcaifeng Master is coming to give her a tutoring session soon?
When she’s teaching me, surely she won’t avoid mentioning the spiritual flower, right?
Maybe… when the time comes, the Peak Master will bring her along to pick spiritual flowers, letting her get a share of the glory too.
“Once the Lingcaifeng Master returns, she should talk to me about this in more detail.”
“That’s true. The Peak Master only asked me to give you a heads-up. She might have been worried you’d head straight back to Wanhuagu after finishing things here.”
As a righteous Venerable, the Lingcaifeng Master couldn’t exactly waltz into Wanhuagu to look for Hua Jian.
The Qian Family’s Frozen Winter City was their best meeting spot.
It was a place friendly to all major factions, the Righteous Sect kept a presence there, and the Lingcaifeng Master had plenty of reasons to visit.
“No wonder the Wanling Sect swapped out a batch of disciples stationed in Frozen Winter City a while back. So that’s what it was for.” Linglong murmured to herself.
Disciples from the Saint Sect stationed in Frozen Winter City were usually rotated every few years, sometimes even every decade.
If a disciple genuinely liked the Northern Territory, they could even apply to stay there permanently.
And this year wasn’t the scheduled rotation time for the Wanling Sect disciples, yet they’d carried out a massive exchange anyway.
The replacement disciples were clearly a tier stronger too. Linglong hadn’t understood why before, but now she realized it was all preparation for the upcoming treasure competition.
The Lingcaifeng Master hadn’t come to the Northern Territory for just one purpose.
She was both setting an ambush for the Dragon Venerable and going after that high-grade spiritual flower.
“Are the replacement disciples really that strong?” Hua Jian asked curiously.
“Hmm… much stronger than before, but there’s only one cultivator at the Ling Emperor realm. The rest are all Ling King realm.”
Within the Saint Sect, Ling Kings were basically the grunt workers. Almost every task needed Ling Kings involved.
They were the diligent little bees of the Saint Sect, flying wherever they were needed.
To ordinary cultivators, Ling King realm practitioners could already be considered experts.
Their social standing in normal places was quite high—they could even lead a faction if they wanted.
But the Saint Sect’s foundations were beyond what ordinary cultivators could imagine.
People those cultivators saw as untouchable big shots were nothing more than errand runners in the Saint Sect.
The Demonic Sect had to ration their Ling Kings carefully—burning through too many at once would cause manpower problems down the line.
Take Wanhuagu, for example. They still hadn’t fully recovered from the disaster years ago.
Their Ling King numbers hadn’t even returned to three-quarters of what they were before.
It would probably take another decade or so for Wanhuagu to fully regain its strength.
But if the Saint Sect suffered the same losses, it would sting, sure, but it wouldn’t leave them crippled like Wanhuagu.
“I used to think Ling Kings were these incredible beings. Now that I’m one myself, I feel like they’re as common as ants everywhere. It’s weird.” Hua Jian couldn’t help but complain.
She felt like her breakthrough had somehow broken through the world’s level along with it.
Before, her enemies were all Ling Masters. Now, they were uniformly Ling Kings.
So my breakthrough just leveled up my enemies instead.
“That’s because you’re moving in different circles now. When you were at the Ling Master stage, you barely had any contact with what Ling Kings did, so naturally you thought they were rare and powerful.”
Linglong reached out and gently poked Hua Jian’s forehead.
Actually, Hua Jian was already a fairly well-traveled cultivator.
During the year she’d spent traveling with Linglong, she’d seen quite a few Ling Kings and Ling Emperors—many of them from the Saint Sect itself.
“Now that you’ve become a Ling King, the things you deal with naturally become Ling King-tier matters. So of course, the opponents you meet are fellow Ling Kings like yourself.”
Hua Jian had leveled up and entered a new dungeon. This dungeon only allowed players between levels forty and fifty.
And yet Hua Jian looked around and asked, ‘Why is everyone level fifty?’
Well, duh—if you’re not level fifty, you can’t even enter this dungeon!
The secret realm exploration she’d just organized had a rule limiting entrants to Ling King realm and below.
With that restriction in place, everyone who showed up was bound to be a Ling King.
“Later, when you become a Ling Emperor, you’ll also realize why all your opponents have become Ling Emperors.”
“And when I reach Ling Zun, I’ll find out there are that many Ling Zuns too?” Hua Jian tilted her head.
“Of course not. Even counting the retired Ling Zun seniors, the number of Venerables in the cultivation world wouldn’t exceed a few hundred. Unless something major happens, you couldn’t find those seniors even if you went looking for them.” Linglong shook her head.
Unlike Ling Kings and Ling Emperors, the number of Ling Zuns was truly very small.
The vast majority of Saint Sect cultivators could only ever reach the Ling Emperor realm.
Going any further was harder than climbing to the heavens.
Oddly enough, the stage with the highest breakthrough rate was actually the Ling Zun realm.
From mortal to Spirit Practitioner, to Spirit Master, even to Ling King and Ling Emperor—every single threshold along the way washed out countless heroes and talents.
But at the Ling Zun realm, something subtle shifted.
Each generation of the Saint Sect produced about four or five Venerables, and one of them would invariably attain the Saint Realm.
In other words, the probability of a Venerable breaking through to Saint was about one in five—strangely high compared to the measly ratios of the lower realms.
“Many saints aren’t true saints, you know. They’re pseudo-saints the Saint Sect force-stacked with resources. They became saints not because their talent warranted it, but because the Saint Sect needed a saint.” Linglong casually dropped a bombshell of a statement.
By rights, someone at her cultivation level shouldn’t know such secrets. But then again, she had a great mother.
She’d grown up listening to all sorts of stories about the cultivation world—those words came straight from her mother’s mouth.
“My mother said that among the current saints of the Saint Sect, only the Jian Sect’s and my master’s are considered true saints. The Magic Path’s saints, though, are almost all genuine ones.”
The Magic Path actually had very few saints.
But those who achieved sainthood through the Magic Path were prodigies of their generation—never weaker than the Saint Sect’s saints.
After all, they had to rely purely on themselves. They didn’t have the Saint Sect’s resources to stack endlessly.
“So… does that mean the Right Path’s advantage isn’t actually that big?”
“Pseudo-saints might struggle to achieve the Immortal Path, but their combat power isn’t much weaker than true saints.” Linglong warned Hua Jian not to overthink it.
A saint was a saint, even if they were stacked up with resources.
Their ceilings might differ, but their floors were rock solid. Either way, no Venerable could touch them.
Besides, Hua Jian was only a Ling King now. Why was she worrying about things so far in the future?
“By the time we can even touch the Saint Realm, hundreds of years will probably have passed.” Linglong muttered quietly.
That was already her optimistic estimate. At their current cultivation speed, they’d need over a decade at the Ling King realm, then several decades at the Ling Emperor realm.
After reaching the Ling Zun realm, the time required became even harder to predict, but… it would definitely take at least a century.
“Hundreds of years? That’s so long. I think a protagonist like me should be breaking through at a jaw-dropping speed.” Hua Jian was taken aback by the number.
I’m a transmigrator protagonist, after all—I can’t just walk the ordinary path like everyone else, right?
The protagonists before me compressed hundreds of years into just over a decade. I should be able to do it too!
“Here we go again… Unless you’re eating legendary spirit pills for every meal, the time required isn’t going anywhere.” Linglong shot her a glare.
She had no idea where Hua Jian’s inexplicable confidence came from.
Low-tier breakthroughs were fast because the pools were shallow. The higher you went, the bigger the pool you had to fill.
Eventually, it got to the point where one or two spiritual items wouldn’t even make a dent.
Taking the right spirit pills could shorten cultivation time, sure, but spirit pills weren’t easy to make.
Even just gathering the raw ingredients was enough to make Venerables tear their hair out.
Unless they stumbled upon a spiritual item by chance, Ling Zuns actually found closed-door cultivation faster than actively hunting for spiritual items to boost their cultivation.
Unless they absolutely needed a specific spiritual item for alchemy, Ling Zuns rarely went out aimlessly searching.
“Besides, cultivation gained through external aids isn’t as solid as what you build yourself. The Saint Tribulation is no joke!” Linglong warned Hua Jian sternly.
She absolutely must not try to take shortcuts—there were no shortcuts on the path of cultivation.
Without accumulating small steps, you could never reach a thousand miles.
To climb higher peaks, the foundation beneath your feet had to be rock solid.
“Got it, Teacher Linglong. I was just talking out loud, that’s all. Besides, spiritual items really are hard to find…” Hua Jian quickly raised her hands in surrender.
When the Little Dragon Girl got serious, she didn’t dare argue face-to-face.
“I think you genuinely believe cultivation is easy. Sometimes I really envy geniuses like you.”
Being called a genius by none other than the Saintess of Yaochi made Hua Jian feel like Linglong might be mocking her.
Like, she knew Linglong wasn’t that kind of person, but that sentence just sounded so passive-aggressive.
“Are you insulting me?!”
Hua Jian wasn’t the type to hold grudges. She usually settled them on the spot, so she chose to be direct.
That fierce accusation made Linglong burst out laughing. She hadn’t expected Hua Jian to go there.
“Of course not! I sincerely think you’re an incredible genius, you know.”
As she spoke, Linglong began counting on her fingers, listing off Hua Jian’s genius traits one by one.
“Look at you—you came from humble beginnings, yet you’d already made a name for yourself before you even met me. During our travels together, you made crucial contributions every single time. Even in the Ascension Gathering’s secret realm, you…”
Listening to Linglong praise her, Hua Jian hesitated for a moment.
On the surface, the words sounded fine. But she knew herself best. The more she listened, the more something felt off.